The Collected Joe Abercrombie (35 page)

‘What’s going on?’

‘Haven’t you heard?’ Jalenhorm’s voice was whispery with excitement. ‘Hoff’s let it be known there’ll be some great matter to discuss.’

‘What is it? Angland? The Northmen?’

The big man shook his head. ‘Don’t know, but we’ll soon see.’

Jezal frowned. ‘I don’t like surprises.’ His eye came to rest on the mysterious bench. ‘What’s that for?’

At that moment the great doors were swung open and a stream of councillors began to flood down the aisle. The usual mixture, Jezal supposed, if a little more purposeful. The younger sons, the paid representatives . . . he caught his breath. There was a tall man at the front, richly dressed even in this august company, with a weighty golden chain across his shoulders and a weighty frown across his face.

‘Lord Brock himself,’ whispered Jezal.

‘And there’s Lord Isher.’ Jalenhorm nodded at a sedate old man just behind Brock, ‘and Heugen, and Barezin. It’s something big. It has to be.’

Jezal took a deep breath as four of the Union’s most powerful noblemen arranged themselves on the front row. He had never seen the Open Council half so well attended. On the councillors’ half-circle of benches there was barely an empty seat. High above them, the public gallery was an unbroken ring of nervous faces.

Now Hoff blustered through the doors and down the aisle, and he was not alone. On his right a tall man flowed along, slender and proud-looking with a long, spotless white coat and a shock of white hair. Arch Lector Sult. On his left walked another man, leaning heavily on a stick, slightly bent in a robe of black and gold with a long grey beard. High Justice Marovia. Jezal could hardly believe his eyes. Three members of the Closed Council, here.

Jalenhorm hurried to take his place as the clerks deposited their burdens of ledgers and papers on the polished tabletop. The Lord Chamberlain threw himself down in their midst and immediately called for wine. The head of his Majesty’s Inquisition swept into a high chair on one side of him, smiling faintly to himself. High Justice Marovia lowered himself slowly into another, frowning all the while. The volume of the anxious whispering in the hall rose a step, the faces of the great magnates on the front row were grim and suspicious. The Announcer took his place before the table, not the usual brightly dressed imbecile, but a dark, bearded man with a barrel chest. He lifted his staff high, then beat it against the tiles, fit to wake the dead.

‘I call this meeting of the Open Council of the Union to order!’ he bellowed. The hubbub gradually died away.

‘There is but one matter for discussion this morning,’ said the Lord Chamberlain, peering sternly at the house from beneath his heavy brows, ‘a matter of the King’s Justice.’ There were scattered mutterings. ‘A matter concerning the royal licence for trade in the city of Westport.’ The noise increased: angry whispers, uncomfortable shufflings of noble arses on their benches, the familiar scratching of quills on the great ledgers. Jezal saw Lord Brock’s brows draw together, the corners of Lord Heugen’s mouth turn down. They did not seem to like the taste of this. The Lord Chamberlain sniffed and took a swig of wine, waiting for the muttering to die away. ‘I am not best qualified to speak on this matter, however—’

‘No indeed!’ snapped Lord Isher sharply, shifting in his seat on the front row with a scowl.

Hoff fixed the old man with his eye. ‘So I call on a man who is! My colleague from the Closed Council, Arch Lector Sult.’

‘The Open Council recognises Arch Lector Sult!’ thundered the Announcer, as the head of the Inquisition made his graceful way down the steps of the dais and onto the tiled floor, smiling pleasantly at the angry faces turned towards him.

‘My Lords,’ he began, in a slow, musical voice, ushering his words out into space with smooth movements of his hands, ‘for the past seven years, ever since our glorious victory in the war with Gurkhul, an exclusive royal licence for trade in the city of Westport has been in the hands of the honourable Guild of Mercers.’

‘And a fine job they’ve done of it!’ shouted Lord Heugen.

‘They won us that war!’ growled Barezin, pounding the bench beside him with a meaty fist.

‘A fine job!’

‘Fine!’ came the cries.

The Arch Lector nodded as he waited for the noise to fade. ‘Indeed they have,’ he said, pacing across the tiles like a dancer, his words scratching their way across the pages of the books. ‘I would be the last to deny it. A fine job.’ He spun suddenly around, the tails of his white coat snapping, his face twisted into a brutal snarl. ‘A fine job of dodging the King’s taxes!’ he screamed. There was a collective gasp.

‘A fine job of slighting the King’s law!’ Another gasp, louder.

‘A fine job of high treason!’ There was a storm of protest, of fists shaken in the air and papers thrown to the floor. Livid faces stared down from the public gallery, florid ones ranted and bellowed from the benches before the high table. Jezal stared about him, unsure if he could have heard correctly.

‘How dare you, Sult!’ Lord Brock roared at the Arch Lector as he swished back up the steps of the dais, a faint smile clinging to his lips.

‘We demand proof!’ bellowed Lord Heugen. ‘We demand justice!’

‘The King’s Justice!’ came cries from the back.

‘You must supply us with proof!’ shouted Isher, as the noise began to fade.

The Arch Lector twitched out his white gown, the fine material billowing around him as he swung himself smoothly back into his chair. ‘Oh but that is our intention, Lord Isher!’

The heavy bolt of a small side door was flung back with an echoing bang. There was a rustling as Lords and proxies twisted round, stood up, squinted over to see what was happening. People in the public gallery peered out over the parapet, leaning dangerously far in their eagerness to see. The hall fell quiet. Jezal swallowed. There was a scraping, tapping, clinking sound beyond the doorway, then a strange and sinister procession emerged from the darkness.

Sand dan Glokta came first, limping as always and leaning heavily on his cane, but with his head held high and a twisted, toothless grin on his hollow face. Three men shuffled behind him, chained together by their hands and bare feet, clinking and rattling their way towards the high table. Their heads were shaved bare and they were dressed in brown sackcloth. The clothing of the penitent. Confessed traitors.

The first of the prisoners was licking his lips, eyes darting here and there, pale with terror. The second, shorter and thicker-set, was stumbling, dragging his left leg behind him, hunched over with his mouth hanging open. As Jezal watched, a thin line of pink drool dangled from his lip and spattered on the tiles. The third man, painfully thin and with huge dark rings round his eyes, stared slowly around, blinking, eyes wide but apparently taking nothing in. Jezal recognised the man behind the three prisoners straight away: the big albino from that night in the street. Jezal rocked his weight from one foot to the other, feeling suddenly cold and uncomfortable.

The purpose of the bench was now made clear. The three prisoners slumped down on it, the albino knelt and snapped their manacles shut around the rail along its base. The chamber was entirely silent. Every eye was fixed on the crippled Inquisitor, and his three prisoners.

‘Our investigation began some months ago,’ said Arch Lector Sult, immensely smug at having the assembly so completely under his control. ‘A simple matter of some irregular accounting, I won’t bore you with the details.’ He smiled at Brock, at Isher, at Barezin. ‘I know you all are very busy men. Who could have thought then, that such a little matter would lead us here? Who would suppose that the roots of treason could run so very deep?’

‘Indeed,’ said the Lord Chamberlain impatiently, looking up from his goblet. ‘Inquisitor Glokta, the floor is yours.’

The Announcer struck his staff on the tiles. ‘The Open Council of the Union recognises Sand dan Glokta, Inquisitor Exempt!’

The cripple waited politely for the scratching of the clerk’s quills to finish, leaning on his cane in the centre of the floor, seemingly unmoved by the importance of the occasion. ‘Rise and face the Open Council,’ he said, turning to the first of his prisoners.

The terrified man sprang up, his chains rattling, licking his pale lips, goggling at the faces of the Lords in the front row. ‘Your name?’ demanded Glokta.

‘Salem Rews.’

Jezal felt a catch in his throat. Salem Rews? He knew the man! His father had had dealings with him in the past, at one time he had been a regular visitor to their estate! Jezal studied the terrified, shaven-headed traitor with increasing horror. He cast his mind back to the plump, well-dressed merchant, always ready with a joke. It was him, no doubt. Their eyes met for an instant and Jezal looked anxiously away. His father had talked with that man in their hallway! Had shaken hands with him! Accusations of treason are like illnesses – you can catch them just by being in the same room! His eyes were drawn inevitably back to that unfamiliar, yet horribly familiar face. How dare he be a traitor, the bastard?

‘You are a member of the honourable Guild of Mercers?’ continued Glokta, putting a sneering accent into the word ‘honourable’.

‘I was,’ mumbled Rews.

‘What was your role within the Guild?’ The shaven-headed Mercer stared desperately about him. ‘Your role?’ demanded Glokta, his voice taking on a hard edge.

‘I conspired to defraud the King!’ cried the merchant, wringing his hands. A wave of shock ran round the hall. Jezal swallowed sour spit. He saw Sult smirking across at High Justice Marovia. The old man’s face was stony blank, but his fists were clenched tight on the table before him. ‘I committed treason! For money! I smuggled, and I bribed, and I lied . . . we were all at it!’

‘All at it!’ Glokta leered round at the assembly. ‘And if any of you should doubt it, we have ledgers, and we have documents, and we have numbers. There is a room in the House of Questions stuffed with them. A room full of secrets, and guilt, and lies.’ He slowly shook his head. ‘Sorry reading, I can tell you.’

‘I had to do it!’ screamed Rews. ‘They made me! I had no choice!’

The crippled Inquisitor frowned at his audience. ‘Of course they made you. We realise you were but a single brick in this house of infamy. An attempt was made on your life recently, was it not?’

‘They tried to kill me!’

‘Who tried?’

‘It was this man!’ wailed Rews, voice cracking, pointing a trembling finger at the prisoner next to him, pulling away as far as the chains that linked them would allow. ‘It was him! Him!’ The manacles rattled as he waved his arm, spit flying from his mouth. There was another surge of angry voices, louder this time. Jezal watched the head of the middle prisoner sag and he slumped sideways, but the hulking albino grabbed him and hauled him back upright.

‘Wake up, Master Carpi!’ shouted Glokta. The lolling head came slowly up. An unfamiliar face, strangely swollen and badly pocked with acne-scars. Jezal noticed with disgust that his four front teeth were missing. Just like Glokta’s.

‘You are from Talins, yes, in Styria?’ The man nodded slowly, stupidly, like someone half asleep. ‘You are paid to kill people, yes?’ He nodded again. ‘And you were hired to murder ten of his Majesty’s subjects, among them this confessed traitor, Salem Rews?’ A trickle of blood ran slowly out from the man’s nose and his eyes started to roll back in his head. The albino shook him by the shoulder and he came round, nodding groggily. ‘What became of the other nine?’ Silence. ‘You killed them, did you not?’ Another nod, a strange clicking sound coming from the prisoner’s throat.

Glokta frowned slowly around the rapt faces of the Council. ‘Villem dan Robb, customs official, throat cut ear to ear.’ He slid a finger across his neck and a woman in the gallery squealed. ‘Solimo Scandi, Mercer, stabbed in the back four times.’ He thrust up four fingers, then pressed them to his stomach as though sickened. ‘The bloody list goes on. All murdered, for nothing but a bigger profit. Who hired you?’

‘Him,’ croaked the killer, turning his swollen face to look at the gaunt man with the glassy eyes, slumped on the bench next to him, heedless of his surroundings. Glokta limped over, cane tapping on the tiles.

‘What is your name?’

The prisoner’s head snapped up, his eyes focusing on the twisted face of the Inquisitor above him. ‘Gofred Hornlach!’ he answered instantly, voice shrill.

‘You are a senior member of the Guild of Mercers?’

‘Yes!’ he barked, blinking mindlessly up at Glokta.

‘One of Magister Kault’s deputies, in fact?’

‘Yes!’

‘Have you conspired with other Mercers to defraud his Majesty the King? Did you hire an assassin to murder ten of his Majesty’s subjects?’

‘Yes! Yes!’

‘Why?’

‘We were worried they would tell what they knew . . . tell what they knew . . . tell . . .’ Hornlach’s empty eyes stared off towards one of the coloured windows. His mouth slowly stopped moving.

‘Tell what they knew?’ prompted the Inquisitor.

‘About the treasonous activities of the Guild!’ the Mercer blurted, ‘about our treasons! About the activities of the guild . . . treasonous ... activities ...’

Glokta cut in sharply. ‘Were you acting alone?’

‘No! No!’

The Inquisitor rapped his cane down before him and leaned forward. ‘Who gave the orders?’ he hissed.